Q+1 is a bonus book included with the four-novel Quadrants Series. The center point in Q+1 is simply enough the short story: an elastic vessel for fiction, able to accommodate narrative arcs, whether revealed in a chaptered micro-bildungsroman, as in Robert Ashleyâ€™s â€śThe Hardware Days Almost Goneâ€ť; manifested as computer instructions in Sumner Carnahanâ€™s â€śAuthentic Incarnationâ€ť; told through the unreliable dual-point-of-view narrator in Thomas Frickâ€™s â€śTroubadour Awakeningâ€ť; or, with a flash of epiphany, as in L. K. Larsenâ€™s â€śLeave a Message.â€ť By pushing the short story in these ways, the works demonstrate the realization of Frickâ€™s narrator when he quotes literary theorist George Steiner: â€śDifficulty is the armature of meaning.â€ť Certainly, many of the fourteen pieces in Q+1â€”and the novels they accompanyâ€”push story to its limits. And still the center holds. â€“Julia Goldberg